


Blood

by hrhrionastar



Series: The Honeyverse [16]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:16:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kahlan's heart belongs to two very different men. She searches desperately for a way to save them from one another, and finds the answer in her dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood

**Author's Note:**

> **Note:** This is part of the honeyverse, and takes place directly before _Up On A Housetop_ , in [The Creatormas Spirit.](http://hrhrionastar.livejournal.com/73497.html#cutid1)
> 
>  **Warnings:** violence, non-explicit sex, Confession

_"Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins."_

Golden light filled the garden. It was one of those days that no one would ever believe was in winter. This warmth surely could belong to autumn at the latest.

Dara Rahl gravely examined a rosebush. In spring, it would be covered with blooms, but presently it was merely brittle stems and branches, like a skeleton.

Dara looked a little bored.

Kahlan sighed, and sat up straighter on the bench by the fountain. The water was currently covered with a thin layer of ice. It sparkled prettily in the sunlight.

Dacey, who was just learning to walk, clung to the fountain's stone edge and peered over it.

She wasn't tall enough yet to climb onto the ice, which was something to be thankful for.

Darken didn't like the children going adventuring to the capital city without himself, Kahlan, Garen or Dahlia as protection. And he preferred more than one adult, just in case. Kahlan didn't approve of the whole household being confined to the palace just because it was winter. The garden was their compromise.

Nicholas was still in lessons with his tutors, learning history and statecraft. Or more probably planning Creatormas presents for his family. Kahlan wouldn't interfere unless he asked for help. Nicholas was an independent child, so grown up already.

Dara and Dacey were her little adventurers.

Kahlan smiled at her daughters. "I know what we can do," she said, surprised it hadn't occurred to her before. "Do you want to meet a nightwisp?"

She pulled Dacey into her lap as she spoke. Dara abandoned the dormant rosebush and climbed up on the bench next to Kahlan, snuggling her face against her mother's red velvet dress.

Kahlan shut her eyes and hummed the sweet tune that never failed to summon nightwisps. She was fairly certain she'd first learned it in Thandor, but it came so naturally to her lips that she might have known it forever.

Kahlan opened her eyes when she heard the faint cooing noise of a nightwisp. There was no sweeter sound in all the world.

"Ooh!" Dacey snatched at the bright, hovering light.

"Her name is Orit," said Kahlan, who had been listening to the cooing. "She says she's happy there are more Confessors in the world. She missed us."

Kahlan blinked away a tear. Why hadn't she summoned a nightwisp sooner? She'd lost Shar helping Richard, and then…With everything that had happened, she'd never even thought of it.

She longed to ask Orit about Richard, about Darken, about the impossible tangle that was her life. Kahlan couldn't bring herself to sacrifice either of the men she loved to the other. Richard would kill Darken for prophecy; Darken would kill Richard for policy. For safety, he would probably say.

If he knew the truth.

"Mommy, where Orit?" Dara whined.

She was staring slightly to the left of where Orit hovered just out of Dacey's eager reach. Nightwisps loved children, but were wise enough to know they weren't always careful.

Dacey was delighted with the nightwisp. But Dara couldn't even see her.

"Oh, sweetie," Kahlan said, pulling Dara closer beside her. "I'm sorry. Orit is talking to your sister right now."

But that wasn't why Dara couldn't see her. Dara couldn't see the nightwisp because she was pristinely ungifted.

Kahlan couldn't believe this had never occurred to her before. Dara was immune to all magic, and nightwisps were made of magic. Kahlan wasn't even certain, now that she ran Orit's soothing babble through her mind again, if the nightwisp could see _Dara._

"My turn!" Dara insisted. " _Please,_ Mommy?"

"Orit has to go now," Kahlan said. She directed an unusually stern look at the nightwisp. She'd never felt more annoyed with one of the tiny, miraculous creatures, and it certainly wasn't Orit's fault. "And we should go inside; Mommy has work to do."

Dara pouted, but she didn't protest when Kahlan stood up, Dacey still in her arms.

The children knew how important Kahlan's work was. As Lady Rahl, she was still the Mother Confessor, and there were people to see and petitions to hear. Darken insisted D'Hara and the Midlands no longer be separate, so she received old allies and old enemies on the same throne.

Eight and a half years ago, Kahlan would never have thought this would work. But Darken was right—keeping two different sets of rules for D'Hara and the Midlands would only ensure they never became one people, and that they kept fighting until the end of time.

Or until Richard returned.

Not that if the Seeker fulfilled the prophecy there would suddenly be peace.

Orit flew quite close to Dacey's face. The little girl giggled. "Bye!" she said, as the nightwisp flew away.

Kahlan's heart twisted.

She took Dara's hand and led her daughters back into the palace.

* * *

Kahlan spent the rest of the morning with Darken in the throne room, hearing petitioners. The heir's throne was empty; Nicholas was still studying.

Dara and Dacey were in Garen's capable charge, probably napping. Garen's care for the children was something Kahlan had never expected from a Mord'Sith, but she knew it was genuine. Ever since Garen had babysat then-three-year-old Nicholas while his nurse visited her sick father, there had existed an accord between them as strong as it was surprising.

After several hours dispensing judgments, Darken and Kahlan shared a light lunch in the conservatory.

The room was filled with all the plants that could be induced to grow indoors, and kept artificially warm all year round with magic. The conservatory had been Darken's fifth wedding anniversary gift to Kahlan. It was her favorite room in the whole palace.

Her gaze dwelt approvingly on a purple orchid blossom. It basked in the sunlight pouring in through the windows.

How simple life must be for a plant.

And how blessed Kahlan was to have someone who knew and loved her well enough to create a place like this for her.

"Why are you so good to me?" she asked suddenly.

Darken raised his eyebrows in a mocking expression she interpreted as: _me, good?_

He'd spent years trying to convince her he wasn't the monster prophecy claimed, but when she said so, he refused to believe her.

"You disarm evil, Kahlan," Darken said lightly.

Her heart beat faster, and she felt dangerously close to tears. It was Darken who disarmed _her_ of all her defenses. And she couldn't regret it, not when he said things like that.

* * *

Kahlan spent the afternoon going over the plans for the annual Creatormas party with Dahlia and Mrs. Millicuddy. Dahlia was in charge of security, and Mrs. Millicuddy was the palace's head cook, and undisputed tyrant of the kitchens.

Kahlan enjoyed their company. Mrs. Millicuddy was a warm, motherly woman who treated Lady Rahl with as much kindness as she considered respectful. Dahlia was cool and unreadable like all the Mord'Sith, but Kahlan knew the other woman valued their friendship.

It was all so very easy, going over the guest list and the menu and how many candles Kahlan thought they would need, and a thousand other tiny details.

The three women worked well together, and the sun was just beginning to set by the time they finished.

It was still afternoon, though, and Kahlan guessed Darken would be working in his study. Parchmentwork, the single worst part of running an empire, as he liked to say.

Kahlan, who remembered the war, was grateful parchmentwork had replaced bloodshed.

She swept up a flight of stairs and nearly bumped into Jennsen at the top.

"Forgive me, Lady Rahl," Jennsen said, dropping her eyes.

Kahlan paused to study Darken's sister for a moment. Jennsen was dressed in a purple gown that suited her pale skin and brilliantly red hair, but she scurried about in the shadows of the palace like a pet who knew she had misbehaved.

Not that Nicholas's kitten, Garie, ever hesitated to give Kahlan an aristocratic glare that rivaled Darken's most serious 'Lord Rahl is displeased' expression.

Kahlan smiled unwillingly.

Jennsen tried to slip past her, down the stairs; Kahlan reached out to stop her, not sure what she would say.

What did one say to someone who had tried to murder oneself and one's beloved? It was only thanks to Dahlia's vigilance and Dara being pristinely ungifted, just like her aunt, that Jennsen had not succeeded in killing both Darken and Kahlan two years ago.

It was to have been the beginning of a new rebellion, one easily quashed once Dahlia had broken Jennsen.

Kahlan could not regret that Jennsen had been prevented from starting another pointless war, but she did wish she could heal the breach between her husband and his sister.

The bond of affection and trust that could exist between siblings was too precious not to pursue. Kahlan had lost her own sister in the war, and in a sense, Darken had lost his brother before Richard had even been born.

"Happy Creatormas, Jennsen," Kahlan said at last. It felt utterly inadequate.

"Thank you, Lady Rahl," Jennsen replied.

This time, Kahlan let her escape down the stairs.

When she reached the door of Darken's study, she knocked briskly, to warn him, but entered without waiting for permission.

Darken sat at his heavy wooden desk, his quill scratching busily in a journeybook. As Kahlan watched, he paused, dipped the quill in a bottle of blood, and then resumed writing.

So far, he hadn't given any indication that he even knew she was in the room.

There were moods in which this would have annoyed Kahlan, but this afternoon she was only struck by the trust it implied.

Darken finished the message with a flourish of penmanship, and shut the journeybook.

He had such beautiful handwriting. It was an entirely frivolous thing for Kahlan to notice, let alone admire, but she couldn't help herself.

A memory flashed across her mind then, sharp and vivid as the touch of an agiel: the woods outside Tamarang, an open journeybook, and the simple words, _I will find you._

A sliver of the old fear swept through her.

But then Darken looked up. The wry intelligence and warm affection in his eyes banished Kahlan's doubts.

Darken had saved the Midlands, welcoming them as part of D'Hara's future. Kahlan knew he cared more deeply for his people than they would ever guess.

And when he looked at her, it was not fear that made her pulse race.

Kahlan perched on the edge of the hard mahogany desk, crossing one leg over the other and swinging a slippered foot.

"To what do I owe the honor?" Darken asked, leaning back in his chair and regarding her with all his attention.

"Does your wife need a reason to visit you?" Kahlan teased.

She leaned forward, with one hand on the wood, and her wedding ring caught the fading sunlight.

The shafts of light fell across the room in colorful geometric shapes, reflected through the stained glass windows.

"You're always welcome," Darken said, covering her hand with his.

Kahlan stilled her tapping foot and tilted her head to one side, so that her elaborately arranged curls fell over her shoulder.

For an impossibly long moment, they simply gazed into one another's eyes.

Darken opened his mouth, and Kahlan knew he was going to tell her about whatever he'd been working on, or ask her advice about Creatormas gifts for the children.

She tightened her grip on his hand and leaned perilously across the desk.

Darken rose to his feet, and Kahlan stretched upward to kiss him, a handful of his vest clutched in her fist.

She couldn't bring herself to talk as if nothing were amiss, not now.

Her relationship with Darken had reached a point where the keeping of her secret ate away at her, the lie she acted like a festering wound in her soul.

Richard _was_ coming back. Kahlan couldn't change that, and she couldn't see any way for it not to end in disaster.

She only wanted to protect those she loved. All of them.

Darken seemed to understand her desire for silence. He buried one hand in her hair and pulled her roughly against him with the other.

Kahlan's blood pounded through her veins, together with the heady sweetness of her power.

Darken claimed her mouth insistently, demanding all her attention. She gave it to him gladly.

They made love on his desk. For a brief time, Kahlan forgot her dilemma in the sheer joy of him.

Her power shook the windowpanes, echoing throughout the room. But it could not take Darken's soul.

Afterwards, Kahlan demanded her husband's help refastening her corset. It really was an incredibly inconvenient garment.

Darken pressed a light kiss to Kahlan's neck. His breath was warm against her skin.

"I love you," he whispered.

How something so simple could mean so much Kahlan was at a loss to understand. But she did know how hard it was for Darken to let himself be vulnerable—to show her his secret heart.

The strength of their intimacy pulled her around like some magnetic force, to meet his eyes.

Kahlan had never felt such a powerful need, not to take, but to give.

She buried her face against his bare shoulder. He smelled of soap and sex, and, faintly, of the coppery scent of blood.

"I love you, too," Kahlan murmured, her voice low to hide the husky hint of tears.

* * *

Kahlan knew she was dreaming. She wriggled deeper under the comforter, and some distant part of her remembered that it was a deep red, with golden geometric shapes embroidered everywhere.

The steady thumping of a heartbeat sounded in her ears, and in her dreaming state she couldn't tell if it were her own or that of the man who slept beside her. It didn't seem to matter.

Kahlan saw Richard. He stood over the Boxes of Orden, but as she watched, a blonde Mord'Sith, whom she had never met but whose name she knew, grabbed a handful of Richard's hair and yanked his head back, forcing him to his knees. Her agiel traced webs of agony over the Seeker's skin before finally stopping his heart. Kahlan stood helpless, and then she saw Darken smirking down at Richard's corpse, his eyes glittery with triumph.

Next Kahlan stood on the balcony of the People's Palace, while Darken held their infant son cradled in his arms and announced to a crowd of his people and hers, "I give you Prince Nicholas, future Lord of D'Hara!"

Dara sat frowning at what, to her, was empty air. "Mommy, where Orit?" she complained.

Kahlan passed Jennsen on the stairs, and then her redheaded sister-in-law was kicking apart the Boxes of Orden. Richard looked briefly horrified, while Kahlan met Zedd's eyes and shared with the First Wizard a glance of surreptitious relief.

Darken sat in his study, writing in a journeybook. He dipped his quill in a glass jar full of blood. Kahlan was almost sure it was his own.

The Boxes of Orden lay in an abandoned satchel by the side of the road.

Nicholas brandished a colorful drawing at his mother. "It's our whole family, Mommy! See, there's Daddy, and you and the baby, and Dara, and me, and Garie, and Mistress Dahlia, and…"

Dacey reached for the glowing nightwisp, her small face alight with laughter.

Darken woke from a week's delirium, cured of the magical fever that had raged through his blood. Kahlan threw her arms around him and wept for joy.

"I don't understand what's happening to me!" Kahlan wailed, clinging to the strong, leather clad arm of a Mord'Sith. The edge of the balcony still swayed dizzyingly before her eyes. "You're with child," Dahlia said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Kahlan stared, trying to wrap her mind around the idea that she could be with child without knowing it. A Confessor always knew, and she had felt no gathering of magic in her womb…

"Is the baby a Confessor like me and Mommy?" Nicholas asked. Kahlan shook her head. "No, she's pristinely ungifted."

Exhausted, begrimed and bedraggled, Kahlan stood before the throne of Darken Rahl. Her dignity was the only armor she had left, yet he made no attempt to take it from her. "The future is ours to share, Kahlan," he said warmly, and she shivered.

Their bodies so closely entangled that she almost didn't know where he ended and she began, Kahlan watched her irises shrink to swirling black, reflected back at her in Darken's bright blue eyes.

Kahlan sat with her knees folded under her on a hill in West Granthia overlooking the Strait of Sorrows, with her hand around Richard's throat. Her power hummed through her blood, stronger than her heartbeat.

Something changed, with the suddenness of a hard slap.

Kahlan opened her eyes.

She was still in that clearing in West Granthia, and the sharp smell of blood assailed her nostrils.

She looked to her left and gasped, putting a hand over her mouth.

Darken lay on the ground, the Sword of Truth piercing his chest as if he were a butterfly pinned to a board.

His eyes were open and glassy, all that sweet torment and sharp intellect vanished as if they'd never been.

Kahlan fell sideways on the grass, feeling suddenly too weak to support her own weight.

But Richard was there. He grasped her forearms, holding her upright. "It's okay, Kahlan," he said. "It's over. You're safe now." He was smiling.

That smile caught at Kahlan's heart, but it didn't chase away the lump in her throat.

"I don't understand," she said. "You're gone, Richard. I married Darken. We've been together for eight and a half years—"

"No." Richard shook his head. "That never happened. You would never betray me like that, Kahlan."

Kahlan felt tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She didn't look at Darken's body. The heroine wasn't supposed to mourn for the villain of the piece.

 _This isn't some nightwisp story!_ her thoughts screamed. _It's different now—_

"I had to, Richard," she tried to explain. "You needed a Confessor to get back. It was the only way."

"And I did get back," Richard agreed. "Don't you see, Kahlan? That future was an abomination. It never should have happened, and now it never will. Your nightmare is over."

Kahlan tried to believe him. The Seeker had fulfilled the prophecy. All was as it should be.

But her grief for Darken was like an open wound, festering in her spirit. And when she closed her eyes, all she saw was that picture Nicholas had drawn for her, of their family.

The innocent souls of her children seared Kahlan's consciousness. Their courage and hope and love had burned so brightly.

But Nicholas, Dara, and Dacey would never be.

Kahlan had assumed she would forget the life of Lady Rahl, Queen of D'Hara, Darken's wife and mother to his children. A life she would never live.

Kneeling in the grass in the circle of Richard's arms, with her eyes closed to keep from seeing the corpse of a man she loved, Kahlan wondered how she could have been so ludicrously optimistic.

Forgetfulness was a mercy she should have known better than to expect from the same cruel fate that had put her in this impossible situation in the first place.

"Richard," she whispered brokenly. She longed for the comforting strength he had always given her so freely.

"Do you love me?" Richard asked.

Kahlan opened her eyes and stared at his dear face, as if she wanted to memorize every one of his familiar features. "I'll always love you," she said.

Then she saw the glitter over Richard's shoulder. The Boxes of Orden lay innocently on the grass, and their faint glow was echoed in Richard's eyes.

Kahlan woke with a sharp intake of breath. The hammering of her heart sounded unnaturally loud in the late night stillness.

The darkness was broken only by the dying embers of the fire, and a sliver of moonlight that entered the bedchamber through a chink in the curtains. But it was enough for Kahlan to see that Darken still slept beside her, breathing evenly.

She envied him his peaceful rest, even though she knew better than anyone else alive the horrors that haunted his dreams.

Kahlan would never forget the night Darken had woken her with eyes still wild, to pour his terror for Nicholas's life into her ears. "He'll be taken from me, I know it," Darken had hissed. "Just like Sam was. The Creator is punishing me for what happened in Brennidon."

The Resistance had murdered Darken's son, Sam, when they blew up a Dragon Corps training facility. He had been just five years old.

Kahlan had seen how terrified Darken was as Nicholas's fifth birthday approached, but she had not guessed at the depth of his guilt over Brennidon.

The Seeker's Confessor would have scorned his remorse and his fears alike. The massacre of all the first-born sons of Brennidon had been unforgivable, and if a male Confessor didn't survive to adulthood, it was surely an escape for which any right-thinking person would have thanked the Creator on his or her knees.

Kahlan had held Darken's head against her breast and stroked his hair while he recited a litany of crimes, and afterwards she had made love to him as if she were trying to draw the poison out of his very soul.

She would give anything to let him return the favor.

But Kahlan watched the steady rise and fall of Darken's chest and did not even touch him, for fear he would wake and she would tell him everything. It was as though the Sword of Truth lay between them.

She knew the worst of him. But, despite the dreams she sometimes had in which he looked at her with sad eyes that had always known of Richard's return, he did not know the worst of her.

Pieces of her dream returned to Kahlan. So many memories…

Dara, staring blankly at where the nightwisp wasn't; Jennsen, kicking apart the Boxes of Orden; Darken, dipping his quill in blood…

Blood.

Orden.

Dara.

Kahlan put a hand over her mouth. An idea had just occurred to her.

The intensity of it, the reawakening of hope after she'd been living so long with despair as her constant companion, was painful.

Kahlan rubbed two fingers against her bottom lip, unconsciously echoing Darken's habitual gesture.

If she were right, she would be going against everything she'd ever been taught, but she could save both Richard and Darken's lives.

 _If_ she were right.

But there was no one she could ask. To tell Darken anything about her dilemma was to choose Richard's destruction, and she shrank from something she knew would damage her husband's trust.

All her friends here were entirely loyal to Darken's interests…

It would be easier to simply decide never to tell, and leave Richard and Nicholas to be equally surprised by one another's existence forty-nine years from now.

But such abdication of responsibility was cowardly.

Besides, Kahlan was _not_ the only one who knew.

What was the saying? A secret shared among three people was safe only if two of them were dead?

Kahlan, the Seeker's Confessor and Darken Rahl's queen.

Alice, her maid, whose understanding was not acute. She would be easily controlled.

And Shota, the witchwoman who had outlined Kahlan's original plan, in the first devastation of her grief for Richard.

Kahlan eased herself slowly out from underneath the comforter and shrugged on her dressing gown. The stone floor was freezing against her bare feet, and she tugged on her slippers. Lastly, she slipped her daggers gently off the nightstand and hooked them through her belt loops.

At the door, she glanced back at Darken. He gave every appearance of still being asleep, but she was uneasily aware that he might be pretending.

If all went as she hoped, she wouldn't have to hide from him much longer.

Kahlan bit her lip, and then she slipped through the door as silently as a shadow.

* * *

Lieutenant Andrews was guarding the door to the dungeons.

A series of details about him flooded Kahlan's mind. He had a sister who worked as an upstairs maid in the palace, he lightened his hair with lemon juice, he cherished a worshipful and unrequited love for Dahlia that he fondly believed to be secret, and he had a sweet tooth.

"Cookie?" she offered. She'd made a detour to the kitchens to pick up a tin of Creatormas cookies, and had also acquired a candle.

Torches burned on the walls of the palace, and there were always a few soldiers on night watch, but the corridors still felt cold and empty. Kahlan was glad to see a familiar face.

"Thank you, Lady Rahl, but I'm on duty," Lieutenant Andrews declined regretfully. "What are you…?"

It was an utterly incomplete question. Kahlan smiled sunnily.

"Sharing a little Creatormas cheer," she explained, waving the tin of cookies.

Bringing Creatormas cookies to the inhabitants of the dungeons in the middle of the night was an absurdity, but it was the sort of thing Darken would label one of Kahlan's 'excessive mercies,' if and when he was told of it.

"Do you need an escort?" Lieutenant Andrews asked, looking at Kahlan in her red dressing gown with the belt cinched tight and her daggers thrust through its loops, her hair loose and flowing down her back in a dark cloud and a tin of Creatormas cookies in her hand.

Imagining the picture she presented, Kahlan actually laughed.

"No, thank you," Kahlan said. This was something she had to do alone.

Lieutenant Andrews opened the door for her, and Kahlan descended the stairs to the dungeons.

Most of the cells were empty; Kahlan was well aware that prisoners were more often than not kept in the palace temple. The dungeons were almost anachronistic.

But, she thought as she glimpsed the woman for whom she was searching, only almost.

The years had not been kind to Shota. Her once red hair was threaded with gray, far more so than the few pale strands Kahlan had found in her own dark locks.

She happened to know that Darken had been using a magical soap from Nejingia to keep his own hair dark for years.

Kahlan set the tin of Creatormas cookies on the cold stone floor, and lit the torch on the wall with her candle.

"To what do I owe the honor of your presence, Confessor?" Shota asked sardonically.

The sharpness in her voice could not have been more different than Darken's sincere welcome.

Kahlan was reminded of how she'd always disliked the sorceress.

She stepped closer to the bars of Shota's cell.

"I have a question," Kahlan explained briefly. "What would have the power to destroy the Boxes of Orden?"

Shota rose to her feet, but didn't come any closer to Kahlan. Her lips were pinched tightly.

"If the Boxes of Orden are destroyed, your Seeker will be stranded in the future forever," she pointed out. "That cannot be. He must fulfill the prophecy."

Only if Richard could never return to the past would Darken let him live. Kahlan knew that much in her bones.

From what Shota had originally told her, the ritual to send him back required Orden, Confession, and agiel.

A Mord'Sith was lost in time with Richard. Kahlan had never met the woman, but from all that Darken and Dahlia had let slip over the years, she guessed that she and Mistress Cara might have been friends, in another life.

Regardless, Richard would have a Mord'Sith, who would have an agiel. No changing that.

If Darken had known of Richard's return eight and a half years ago, he could have killed Kahlan, at that time the last living Confessor.

On balance, she thought he probably would have. And she would not have been altogether sorry. Not then.

Everything was different now. Kahlan knew Darken would give his life for their children, even as she would.

Which left destroying Orden the only way to be sure Richard couldn't complete the ritual.

But maybe there _was_ no way to be sure.

"Richard must fulfill the prophecy," Kahlan repeated slowly. "Does that mean he will return regardless? That nothing I do matters?"

In a way, it would be a relief.

"No," Shota replied. "Not every prophecy comes true. But this one must."

She stepped closer to the bars of her cell, her eyes burning into Kahlan's like twin dying suns. The scarlet rhombus of light cast by the torch gave an illusion of warmth, where it fell across the two women. Kahlan pulled her dressing gown closer about her body, thankful for its heavy velvet.

"This world is an abomination," Shota said. Her voice was quiet, but it contained the force of absolute conviction. "It never should have happened. You have fought your whole life for the Seeker. He is the only one who can save us from Darken Rahl's tyranny. Knowing all that, how can you doubt?"

Kahlan opened her hand in an ambiguous gesture. Her fingers brushed the cold metal bars.

Shota's eyes narrowed. "Do you love him?"

Kahlan flinched from the accusation in the witchwoman's hard eyes. But then she lifted her chin. She was not ashamed of her feelings for Darken.

Shota read the truth in Kahlan's face, and made a disgusted noise. "You do, don't you?"

"If it were only that…" Kahlan said, more than half to herself.

She loved Darken, yes, but that was not why she was here, trying to find a way to strand Richard in a future not of his making.

Kahlan would tear her own heart from her chest if she thought it her duty to do so.

She already had. She'd left Dennee for dead, and rediscovered her little sister only to lose her again. Long ago, she had left her father and found sanctuary with the Sisters of the Light, and despite knowing it had been the right choice, she still remembered how guilty she had felt for abandoning him. She had given up whatever opportunity she might have had to mourn for Richard and Zedd in peace, for the slim chance that her Seeker at least might yet return.

The only time she had ever gone against her duty was in permitting her Confessor son to live.

And yet that had not been a mistake. Nicholas was not evil. In his seven and a half years of life he had already taught both his parents a good deal about love and innocence and hope.

How could it be her duty to undo a world where Nicholas lived?

"You are a fool," Shota said harshly. "What do you think you're doing? Darken Rahl is a monster. He should have been killed at birth. How many innocents has he slain? The magical plagues, the quads sent after the members of your own sisterhood, Brennidon? The blood on his hands can never be washed away with wishing."

"I know," Kahlan admitted. "But it's different now. He's changed."

She had given so much of herself to stopping Darken's tyranny. And yet his victory had begun a process of healing for both the Midlands and D'Hara. The peace had brought with it a prosperity the likes of which had not been seen in at least a century.

And together, she and Darken had done more for the people, with orphanages and hospitals and schools and libraries, than she and Richard ever had with war and rousing speeches about justice.

Shota laughed bitterly. "Changed? Darken Rahl will never change. He is a curse, a fiend sent to plague this world by the Keeper."

She tapped her Rada'Han with one finger. Kahlan raised her eyebrows, refusing to be unnerved by the memory of her own brief imprisonment here, and the Rada'Han she no longer wore.

"Why else would he keep me imprisoned?" Shota went on. "He fears the prophecy."

Kahlan frowned. It seemed too much to expect Darken to set the witchwoman free, when she called him a monster.

As if his crimes were so impossibly wicked they could not have been committed by a mortal man.

Blood pounded through Kahlan's skull, and she put a hand to her forehead.

"The Seeker will be guided to fulfill his destiny," Shota said calmly. "And Darken Rahl will suffer eternal torment in the Underworld. I pray that when the Seeker slays that foul creature, his soul will wander forever, lost in the mists of eternal damnation."

A red haze descended over Kahlan's vision. Her head was aching.

Shota took a step back.

Kahlan stared into the witchwoman's cold eyes. Her power swirled through the room, and she no longer felt cold.

The torchlight flickered crazily, sending shadows and lines of light across the bars of Shota's cell.

Kahlan stood absolutely still. Only her hair moved, blown in an unnatural breeze.

Shota's eyes flashed black. She fell to her knees.

"Command me, Confessor."

Kahlan swayed on her feet as the Con Dar ebbed from her blood, suddenly dizzy and exhausted.

Her physical weakness was at once followed by guilt. Although she had guessed Shota to be a threat to Darken, she had never before considered the witchwoman her own enemy.

And yet the Con Dar swept away doubts. Kahlan knew where she stood now.

"Tell me," she ordered, "how to destroy the Boxes of Orden."

"There is some suggestion that it could be done with the Sword of Truth," Shota replied at once, eager to serve her mistress. "A sufficiently powerful wizard might burn them to ash."

"What of pristinely ungifted blood?" Kahlan asked. She sank to her knees to meet the witchwoman's eyes. "What would happen if Orden came in contact with, say, as much blood as one requires to write a message in a journeybook?"

More than that, and Dara would be hurt. Kahlan couldn't let that happen.

"The pristinely ungifted are anathema to magic," Shota said. "A few drops of their blood alone would be enough to render anyone who drank it immune to all but the most powerful spells. It would destroy Orden, if anything can."

Kahlan nodded. She had guessed right. It was always blood.

The blood on Darken's hands and on her own, the Blood Rage, the sharp copper of Jennsen's hair and the gold on scarlet of the Rahl family crest. Dara's blood could change the world.

"It is why the pristinely ungifted are usually killed before they reach adulthood," Shota added. "They are too dangerous to be permitted to live."

Like male Confessors. Like Darken, raised with the looming threat of a prophecy it was impossible, so to speak, to live up to. Like Nicholas, who had broken Kahlan's stubborn resistance to this life and this love more surely than even Darken had.

Dangerous, indeed.

Kahlan smiled.

"Love is always a risk," she said. "Maybe that's the point."

"You will destroy Orden. The Seeker will never get back."

"'In this life, you can't go back, only forward,'" Kahlan quoted. Zedd had told her that.

As she rose and picked up her candle, she wondered if the First Wizard would comprehend her choice, or if he would hate her for it.

She knew she could make Richard understand when he returned. But it would take time for him to forgive her.

And he wasn't the only one.

Kahlan turned back to Shota, absently noticing the tin of Creatormas cookies still on the floor. Should she pick them up?

"If my husband comes…" she began.

"Yes, mistress?" Shota asked.

Kahlan took a ragged breath. "When Darken comes and asks you what we spoke of," she said, "tell him everything."


End file.
